I had a 4-way scrolling engine that I used for 1-screen mode. I wanted to use it quickly for the compo, so I disabled the vertical scrolling feature to do a horizontal side scrolling game, using horizontal mirroring.

I'm of the opinion that everything should flicker, even the player sprite.

I should also try this solution and see if it's that bad.

tokumaru wrote:

Why would you choose to have glitches at all if you have an empty name table just sitting there? Do you plan to do anything with it at some point?

When I started the project, I had an 8-way scrolling engine that used 1-screen mirroring.It was easier and quicker to use it as is with horizontal mirroring, and eventually change it later to support vertical mirroring.

Simultaneous 2-player would kick ass! It can be somewhat difficult to implement though, since it affects the behavior of the camera, and the object system must be able to handle a second player (i.e. no hardcoded state variables if you don't want to duplicate all the logic). Another concern is the low number of palettes, if each player uses a different palette.

Since you're going the full Kickstarter route with this, I guess I should address some design issues I had with the competition entry. I didn't see this covered while skimming the thread, so I figured it was worth pointing out. Sorry in advance if it's stuff that's already in your pipeline. Apart from these two points I think the game is very solid, and definitely deserved winning.

1. The special weapons weren't really obvious. It takes a while before you get the ice pepper, and fire for the red one looks similar to the regular attack, so when I was playing around to see what it did after picking it up, I couldn't figure it out, as I didn't notice the difference, so I wasn't sure if it were a passive effect, or maybe something I had to use later.Sure this stuff could be solved in the documentation, but it wouldn't hurt to have it implemented in a more intuitive manner. For example, a mini-puzzle that requires you to use the special item right after picking it up, and a more obvious difference in how the special fire looks from the regular fire.EDIT: After replaying to confirm my statement, I have to admit that the red pepper special attack does differ quite a lot, but at the time it still had me confused. I'm not sure exactly what else you can do with it, but maybe introducing the ice effect before the fire one, for a more obvious effect, rather than just assuming you are getting increased damage?

Also, my second playthrough raised aanother issue. There's no downside to using the special attack (when you have the red one, anyway), unlike games with similar attacks like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden which use up ammunition. While I'm generally not a fan of having limited resources for stuff like this, it feels weird that the more powerful attack doesn't just replace the regular attack while you have it. What's the purpose of even getting the choice? I would add either an obvious downside to the fire attack (it could be really slow or have limited range?), or have both weapons replace the standard attack (to keep it consistent), with added power to the ice attacks (eg. a second attack to a frozen enemy kills it)

2. I didn't like the bosses much. The presentation is great, and the general design ideas are definitely nice, but dodging their fire felt clumsy and unprecise due to how fast the attacks were. In both fights the only thing that worked for me was finding a safespot that I knew could never hit me, which made the fight both trivial and repetitive, especially for the one in the castle.If I were to design this, I would go for slightly more randomized attack patterns (eg. slight offsets in timing or direction, or just shuffled set patterns) that always forces the player to react to what's coming, but at the same time I would make them slower and easier to dodge, so that the game remains manageable while the player still feels like he/she is doing a good job.

1. The special weapons weren't really obvious. It takes a while before you get the ice pepper, and fire for the red one looks similar to the regular attack, so when I was playing around to see what it did after picking it up, I couldn't figure it out, as I didn't notice the difference, so I wasn't sure if it were a passive effect, or maybe something I had to use later.Sure this stuff could be solved in the documentation, but it wouldn't hurt to have it implemented in a more intuitive manner. For example, a mini-puzzle that requires you to use the special item right after picking it up, and a more obvious difference in how the special fire looks from the regular fire.EDIT: After replaying to confirm my statement, I have to admit that the red pepper special attack does differ quite a lot, but at the time it still had me confused. I'm not sure exactly what else you can do with it, but maybe introducing the ice effect before the fire one, for a more obvious effect, rather than just assuming you are getting increased damage?

Also, my second playthrough raised aanother issue. There's no downside to using the special attack (when you have the red one, anyway), unlike games with similar attacks like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden which use up ammunition. While I'm generally not a fan of having limited resources for stuff like this, it feels weird that the more powerful attack doesn't just replace the regular attack while you have it. What's the purpose of even getting the choice? I would add either an obvious downside to the fire attack (it could be really slow or have limited range?), or have both weapons replace the standard attack (to keep it consistent), with added power to the ice attacks (eg. a second attack to a frozen enemy kills it)

Powerups will be introduce differently in the full game.They could replace the regular attack, but the ice cream doesn't do any damage, so it would be weird.The regular shot is quicker than the red-pepper-shot. However, we can imagine something like having two powerups. The red peppers would replace the regular shot, and the ice cream would be another power up to use with UP+B.

By the way, in the demo, when you froze an enemie and you shoot at it, it unfreezes instantly which is not a good idea for me. Ideally, you should be able to shoot at it as many time as you want during its freezing state.

Sumez wrote:

2. I didn't like the bosses much. The presentation is great, and the general design ideas are definitely nice, but dodging their fire felt clumsy and unprecise due to how fast the attacks were. In both fights the only thing that worked for me was finding a safespot that I knew could never hit me, which made the fight both trivial and repetitive, especially for the one in the castle.If I were to design this, I would go for slightly more randomized attack patterns (eg. slight offsets in timing or direction, or just shuffled set patterns) that always forces the player to react to what's coming, but at the same time I would make them slower and easier to dodge, so that the game remains manageable while the player still feels like he/she is doing a good job.

Sorry about that, boss patterns will be tweaked indeed. But hey, this was my first time designing/programming a game Good advice though, I'll definitely remember those !

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